e. People

These are the sub-headings of this section, click to go to each page (also in main menu):

Finca Luna

Fertility

Water

Buildings

People

Julio & Stella

These are the core people of Finca Luna.

Stella is a community organizer who mostly has experience of doing permaculture with large groups of people in London, England, and is living in La Palma since the end of 1999.

Julio is a palmero (native of La Palma) with a large extended family which has been on the Island for more than 4 generations (possibly more, these are the ones we know of), and the 5 brothers have wives from Europe, SouthAmerica and Africa.

Our excess produce has always been distributed to the family, and they are slowly becoming more interested in the production side of things.

Team Work

Braziers Park is a project in England concerned with studying and removing the roots of war in humans.

It was set up a in the 50s wth this Mission, which we adopted in solidarity:

“To learn all we can of human nature

and its possible and desirable future development;

to combine the best of the scientific tradition

with constructive exploration of social initiative

and individual creativity

in body, mind and spirit;

to disseminate findings

which will contribute to the art of living

and the science of life.”

There probably isn´t anything more important than figuring out how humans can live peacefully together on the planet: it is our wars with Nature and with each other that are the root of all destruction.

It is very difficult to find the people for this, as most will pay lip-service to this quite eagerly but then flake out at the first sign of difficulty, but this has been from the beginning and continues to be to this day (en of 2011) is one of the dreams & purposes of Finca Luna: a conscious study-group of people living and working together who are willing to use their personal experience to test - with scientific rigour - a variety of ‘people-care’ models - knowing this could be a powerful force.

This is what Braziers has been trying to do for over half a century, and indeed what the ecovillage movement is doing as a whole, more or less consciously. More variety and dialogue is needed in this area.

At the end of 2010, the PDC+++ course made possible for us to go into much more depth with teaching the quite unusual & possibly paradigm-changing PeopleCare Module.

Action Learning

The Action Learning Programme was an experiment on many levels, started in 2006 on a more organized, yearly base, and one of these is to test out and perfect the models we propose in our ‘Module 1 - People Care’ of the permaculture course: the patterns that are observable in groups, in particular what encourages and prevents collective intelligence and effective self-organization from operating in small groups.

More about this in the Research Section: Action Learning.

< Guille (Spain), David (Switzerland) & Antoine (Belgium) on Antoine's leaving day.

The Action-Learning studentsare a main input on the farm: as much as we can we create the environment where they can really take ownership of the site and design from scratch and through the whole cycle: observation > design > implementation > evaluation, whilst picking up basic practical farm-management skills AND group-work skills (the most important part).

The whole project has effectively been a ‘rolling permaculture’ design dreamt up and executed by very many people.

I started off offering the old (rented) Finca as an action-learning ‘playground’ in 2001, starting with wwoofing (people working in exchange for food and accomodation) and slowly changing to everyone contributing equally.

We first had people coming and going at any time, but more recently (2005) decided to only take on people as groups and at at particular dates.

This enables a more definite ‘community experience’ (as a group changes every time a new person comes or goes) but also makes it possible to offer a full yearly PDC at the start of this 3 or 5 month group design experience.

Challenging and very fruitful in terms of learning, for everyone, but we realized there is only so far we could take this with temporary groups, so ended the yearly Action Learning Programme in 2010 in favor of putting our energies into finding a permanent team and at the same time developing a more in-depth and different kinds of Action Learning opportunities, built around the wonderful PDC+++ Course.

Womens Support Group

This section is dedicated to the women permaculture pioneers I admire, both deceased and alive and kicking.

These are the women whose work and memory I will do my best to honor and keep alive with my life and work:

Dana Meadows (1941-2001) and Emilia Hazelip (1938-2003), both organic farmers and brilliant thinkers who gave so much to us all and died far too soon,

to my best friend from school Lucia Vittorini (1965 - 2006) who was my first and closest model of social activism, loving friend from 11years old to my forties, a disabled woman of great intelligence and fierce integrity, originality & love for progress, who fought injustice wherever she saw it, and taught me much about friendship,

to Margarita Arnaiz (1961 - 2006) a Basque permaculture pioneer whom I didn't meet personally but know bravely tried to do the work of unifying the permaculture network in Spain many years ago and failed, but made it a lot easier for us to follow in her footsteps later.

Maxine Angus (1962 - 2009) who set up Green Adventure with us, taught me unforgettable lessons about how much about how institutionalized racism & sexism ravage people, who was a beautiful loving friend, amazing person & an ethical beacon in my life, always engaged in small & great ways in a fierce & passionate fight for justice & upholding of human rights.

All of these women were thinking and living ahead of their times - and payed a high price for that.

One of the hardest things to deal with as a permaculture pioneer woman is the daily toxic rain of sexist opression one has to deal with, coming from all angles, many heavy showers of it, made up of thousands of drops of disrespect, dehumanizing attitudes, belittling, patronizing assumptions ... including occasional bucket-fulls that pile up and take great amounts of energy to weather.

The mycelium of friendship and in particular the soil and roots of the caring support, laughter and understanding of other women pioneers makes it possible to neutralize some of these toxins and even occasionally turn some of that to nutrients! (all opressed groups get unique perspectives of the 'underbelly of the beast', both because and in spite of their under-dog positions, and the occasional flashes of insight this offers can be very exciting because so enlightening)

These below are a few of the very much alive and kicking posse of women (in no particular order) that I have the great privilege to know and share time, laughs and tears with in my life - a celebration!

A deep and grateful thankyou to all of you, you´re ALL life-lines for me!

< Marian is an inspiring friend and permaculture farmer on Tenerife, lone parent of three children and sole manager of a large farm she started to turn to permaculture methods around 2003, before she discovered permaculture. A great experimentor and observer, here proudly showing her ñame growing out of mulch in a very dry area (shaded but no extra water).

< Cristina and Nuria, on Gran Canaria, another part of my vital support-structure: Cris is an ex-student of the Action Learning Programme who became a close friend (on the left, with her baby) and Nuria is also a very funny & wise friend + great business-woman, sole owner and co-ordinator of a very successful permaculture farm. Both are also occasional teachers on our Academy team, Nodo Espiral España.

< here with Anita and Maxine, intimate friends whom I love deeply and very likely saved my life on several occasions, who built Green Adventure with me from 1995 and were crazy enough to (at very short notice) come to meet me 'in between airports' in January 2009 on a rare visit through London on my way to Tasmania from Spain (we hadn´t seen each other in years and I only had only about 4 hours from City Airport to Heathrow to see them, and they showed up, we nattered lots on the train, ate doughnuts and took these silly pics)

(Maxine died in 2009, killed in the battle against racism & sexism she bravely fought all her life)

gorgeous gorgeous people ... :)

... add pix later ...

Martine and Helen were in my permaculture women's support group and Martine in my permaculture diploma support group before that, both very funny, intelligent and kind women who inspire me a lot and I enjoy keeping in touch with.

Other permaculture women whom I draw strength and inspiration from (although I don't know them personally that well and some even at all) are Cari Cruz, Robyn Francis, Rosemary Marrow, Starhawk, Wangari Maathai, Vandana Shiva, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Arundhati Roy ...

and more recently (jan 09) Elaine Ingham and Anna Edey

(these last two I was introduced to on a permaculture course in Tasmania where I got some interesting insights on all this stuff (january Blog entry on the Opression page)